Sprungmarken

Let's cooperate: The interdisciplinary investigation of social interaction

September 18 - 19, 2017

Venue:

Hanse-WissenschaftskollegLehmkuhlenbusch 427753 DelmenhorstGermany

Organizers:

Dr. Martin BleichnerCarl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg

Jun. Prof. Dr. Stefan ScherbaumTechnical University Dresden

“No man is an island, Entire of itself,Every man is a piece of the continent,A part of the main.”

Everything we do, think, feel or perceive is embedded in a social context. In the interactions with others we can behave in ways that are impossible in isolation. The interactions are indeed what makes us human. Understanding how human interactions work is therefore a fundamental aspect of understanding ourselves. “Human interaction lies in an interdisciplinary noman’s land: It belongs equally to anthropology, sociology, biology, psychology, and ethiology but is owned by none of them.“Steven Levinson

Within the interdisciplinary project IMPACT funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, we started to explore social interaction from three perspectives: The performing arts contribute a deep understanding of how to achieve a maximum of human-human interaction; music, dance or theatre are the pivot of coordinated actions. Improvisational theatre, for example, is a form of performing arts depending on the spontaneous social interactions of several actors on stage. Stories emerge from successful social interactions, the give-andtake of each actor — flawed social interactions will lead directly to a failing of the story. The coordinated performance of a jazz combo are another example that depends on successful social interactions. From a scientific perspective the social interactions that take place during the coordinated actions of performers can be used as a model system to understand human interactions in general. The cognitive sciences have a long tradition in understanding and modeling individual brains in the cycle of actions and perception. Different non-invasive brain activity monitoring techniques such as electroencephalography (EEG) or functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) provide insight into the relationship between neural processes and behavior. But when it comes to understanding social interactions most studies have been limited to often very artificial and unnatural situations. The technology perspective, finally, addresses the fact that social interactions are not only face-to-face but that our interactions are mediated instantaneously through artificial systems or that we directly interact with the technical systems, be it a smartphone or a robot. To make these systems interact successfully with us we have to explicitly teach them how humans approach interaction. The necessity to make the human interactions explicit, so that machines can act accordingly, provides yet another perspective.

The symposium aims to bring together researchers from these three fields and to foster exchange and collaboration. We all can learn from the other fields and their different approaches.

September 19, 2017

On day two we have structured discussions to dig deeper into the topics and issues that have were raised on day one. The goal is to generate research questions, and to work towards joint projects and potential grant applications.

09.08.2017, 18.00 Uhr (nicht öffentlich)Fellow Lecture:
Beyond the Da Vinci Code and the Voynich Manuscript: Towards a Social History of Early Modern Cryptography
Prof. Dr. Benedek Láng (Guest of the Rector),

16.08.2017, 18.00 Uhr (nicht öffentlich)Fellow Lecture:
"The Ocean, the Sea & the Watery Part of the World, from the Bottom of the Ocean to the Eye of the Storm." A Painter Wonders about the Relationship between Man and the Sea.
Kim Nekarda (Artist in Residence),

01.11.2017, 18.00 Uhr (nicht öffentlich)Fellow Lecture:
How to Overcome the Frustrating Impossibility to Write a Play Whose Characters Are Smarter than Their Author
Rebekka Kricheldorf (Writer in Residence),

09.03.2016, 18.00 Uhr (nicht öffentlich)Fellow Lecture:
Why Do we Get Lost and How Do we Find our Way? The Science of Models and Representations of Space
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Wai-Tat Fu (Fellow) and Dr. Franz-Benjamin Mocnik (Twin Fellow),